Ruth Padel was born in London in 1947 and educated at Oxford. She lived for several years in Greece and worked as a Greek scholar before becoming a freelance writer. She has won the National Poetry Competition and published two books about reading modern poetry, most recently The Poem and the Journey. Other non-fiction includes I'm A Man, about rock music and Greek myth, and Tigers in Red Weather, a nature book and travel memoir about the years she spent searching for tigers in Asian jungles. She has published six collections of poems, most recently The Soho Leopard (2004).

Ruth Padel was born in London in 1947 and educated at Oxford. She lived for several years in Greece and worked as a Greek scholar before becoming a freelance writer. She has won the National Poetry Competition and published two books about reading modern poetry, most recently The Poem and the Journey. Other non-fiction includes I'm A Man, about rock music and Greek myth, and Tigers in Red Weather, a nature book and travel memoir about the years she spent searching for tigers in Asian jungles. She has published six collections of poems, most recently The Soho Leopard (2004).